"It is damaging traditional gaming for sure but... how it’s going to work out is anyone’s guess. The trend that I see is it’s probably going to be one of the biggest bubbles and explosions that our industry's seen in a long time and I think when it crashes it’s going to crash very hard. I don’t think there’s an economy there." -- Silicon Knights founder Denis Dyack on social gaming.

I think that social gaming and actual gaming are two very different market segments, trying to blend the two together for the sake of profit can't possibly go well. There's a reason Zynga isn't making a Call of Duty game despite there being a ton of potential profit there. I'm not sure why developers and publishers think that they can suddenly replicate that success despite most of their efforts falling flat on their face. They aren't playing to their strengths in most cases and I doubt the market demographic has a lot of meaningful crossover anyway.

I kind of agree but with the money Farmville generates it hard to say that there's no economy there. At least for the short term, their obviously is. There's no doubt that it's a bane to real gaming though. Everybody and their uncle wants to throw a bunch of garbage social features that no one wants in every game now, thinking that this is all that's keeping their game from doing Farmville-like numbers.

“The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.” - Mahatma Gandhi

It will level off but it won't be a bubble bursting. The demand won't magically drop.

What will drop is the valuation of many of these companies once people realize it's a minor escape, not a true alternative form of entertainment.

People can't just say "oh, it's the next music game" because music games by default have the same basic gameplay. Casual games do not. Zynga monetized it well. Someone else will likely find the way to add fun. As it stands these are all variations of the old Pimpwars.com, which amazes me. I played the shit out of that game in 2000, waiting 24 hours for my turn, running a gang with a bunch of original members and a former founder. Same basic thing - wait for turns. I don't remember if they ever allowed you to buy turns. Zynga does. Pimpwars would have ruined any balance it had (and I don't know if it did, because some people did so insanely well and that damn former founder couldn't even explain it) but it would have made a fortune if it allowed you to even just buy 10 turns per day for a buck.

Jerykk wrote on May 11, 2011, 04:48:I sincerely hope that Dyack is right.

+1. Frustrates me to no end to see scumbag companies like Zynga which owe most of their initial success to signing people up for text message scams succeeding with these micro-transaction based progress bars masquerading as games. There's always going to be a market for this to be sure but as others have said, it will level off and overvalued stuff like this is due for a big correction.

Zynga is absolutely overvalued and Wall St is retarded for social anything right now. There will be a crash in that regard. But the money coming in will keep growing. Why not? Like someone said, humanity as a whole (not just social gamers) has the attention span of a gnat. The analysis done after this was wrong, though: the gnatlike attention span is what makes this market so profitable.

If a jackass is sitting in front of the TV with his laptop, or at work bored, or wherever, he can fill his time with a social game. Because he has the attention span of a gnat and nothing to do. And when he gets tired of that game he can find another. Because they know he has the attention span of a gnat and crank out so many of these things so cheaply and rapidly that a new one is always around the corner.

These things won't be killed by the short attention span, rather they wholly thrive on them.

Cutter wrote on May 10, 2011, 22:51:Dyack is wrong here because those aren't the sorts of games real gamers play and casual gamers who play them really aren't interested in real games. He's right about companies like Zynga being vastly overvalued atm as there's always bound to be a correction and leveling out.

I believe he is right because most of the people that spend a significant amount of time on sites like Facebook have the attention span of a spastic three-year-old. This will lead to a mini dot-com bubble and burst.

Dyack is wrong here because those aren't the sorts of games real gamers play and casual gamers who play them really aren't interested in real games. He's right about companies like Zynga being vastly overvalued atm as there's always bound to be a correction and leveling out.

"There are two kinds of people in this world; people who love delis, and people you shouldn’t associate with.” - Damon Runyan